Tundra 37

by Aubrie Dionne

  He stood, brush­ing fluffy snow off the hatch. “Come on!”

  Eager to get out of the cold, they piled in and he revved up the en­gines, gain­ing force to dis­lodge from the bank of snow. He pressed the gas and the tires skid­ded, lurch­ing for­ward three cen­ti­meters and then fall­ing back.

  “Do you want me to get out and push?” Tech offered.

  “No, that’s not ne­ces­sary.” Flick­ing his hands over the con­trol pan­els he se­lec­ted a lower gear and tried again. The tires squealed, and he pressed harder un­til they found trac­tion. The vehicle rolled for­ward, freed from the drift. A chorus of hollers and hoots erup­ted be­hind him as they drove into their shel­ter.

  He glanced over at Gemme and she mouthed the words, “Good job.”

  Her sup­port made him burn in­side out. Even though he was a lieu­ten­ant, he couldn’t ig­nore his feel­ings any longer. He wished he could get a chance to talk with her alone. How much con­trol did she have over the pair­ings? The more time he spent with her, the more he real­ized she em­bod­ied everything he’d ever sought, and he ached to ask her if she felt the same draw to­ward him. If only Luna hadn’t con­tinu­ally pushed her­self in the way.

  The landrover inched into cave. Head­lights il­lu­min­ated a glossy ceil­ing where the laser fire had melted lay­ers away. It looked like they traveled through an ocean hung in sus­pen­sion, wa­ter all around them but not a drop touch­ing the hood. Brent­wood marveled, feel­ing like a little boy in the aqua-tank room back on the Ex­ped­i­tion. These walls of slick ice were galactic­ally more stun­ning.

  They parked at the back of the cave where the wall curved in seam­lessly to the floor. Tech helped Brent­wood peg up a thermal nylon tarp to block the en­trance while Gemme and Luna un­loaded their tents and other sup­plies. Al­though ice sur­roun­ded them, the in­side of the cave was sev­eral de­grees warmer than the bliz­zard out­side. With the thermal en­ergy cells, it would be a toasty bath.

  An­chor­ing the last peg of the tarp into the ice wall, Tech grumbled, “Had enough snow for one day. I’m go­ing to sleep in the vehicle to­night. You can have the tent.”

  “Okay, Tech.” Brent­wood pat­ted him on the back. He’d driven the landrover for hours, and he de­served to get some peace­ful rest. “Thanks for help­ing.”

  “No prob­lem, chief.”

  As Tech snuggled in the back­seat and the hatch closed, Brent­wood turned to the ladies. They’d already con­struc­ted the re­main­ing three tents while he and Tech put up the tarp. Al­though Luna held the last peg of her own tent in her hand, he sus­pec­ted Gemme had done most of the work.

  The nylon of Gemme’s tent twitched as she moved around in­side. Eager­ness stirred in­side him. Fum­bling with words in his head, he walked over to speak with her. He wanted to tell her what an amaz­ing job she’d done that day, but most of all, he wanted to ask her about the pair­ings, and how she chose each couple. If she felt as strongly as he did, he wanted his pair­ing to be with her.

  Luna in­ter­cep­ted, pla­cing her body between him and the tent.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Brent­wood stifled his im­pa­tience. He didn’t want to snap at her the way he did when she woke him. “Again?”

  “Uh-huh. Con­cern­ing Beta Prime.”

  It seemed as though fate kept twist­ing his path away from Gemme. Or was it just Luna? “Right now?”

  “It’s time sens­it­ive in­form­a­tion. Yes.”

  It took all his en­ergy to sup­press his frus­tra­tion. But he was a lieu­ten­ant, and the mis­sion had to come first. He mo­tioned for her to join him in his tent. “Okay. If it’s im­port­ant.”

  “More im­port­ant than any­thing else in this ice cave.”

  He opened the tent flap and she smiled as she slid in un­der­neath his arm.

  The thought of be­ing alone with Luna made him squirm like he put on a shirt two sizes too small. His tent closed in on them, nar­row and too in­tim­ate, yet he couldn’t dis­cuss the secret mis­sion in the pres­ence of the oth­ers, and the cave echoed every word. Not want­ing to give Luna the wrong idea, or any­one else for that mat­ter, he got right down to busi­ness. “What’s this about?”

  “While you were sleep­ing, I ac­cessed the Ex­ped­i­tion’s data­base, and us­ing the code word Beta Prime, found hun­dreds of secret files on the orb. It seems the sci­ent­ists study­ing it ex­per­i­enced strange hal­lu­cin­a­tions and dreams, not only of memor­ies in their past, but of times be­fore they were born, maybe even pre­vi­ous lives on Old Earth.”

  “What are you talk­ing about?”

  “The en­ergy from the orb stim­u­lates parts of the cereb­ral cor­tex, and from there, en­ergy travels to as­so­ci­ation tracts con­sist­ing of con­nector neur­ons thought to be as­so­ci­ated with reas­on­ing, learn­ing, and memory.”

  “Hold on, are you say­ing that orb ac­tiv­ates long-lost memor­ies?”

  Luna stepped closer. “Could be. There is no one part of the brain that stores memory; there­fore the find­ings are hy­po­thet­ical at best. What drew my at­ten­tion was the sci­ent­ists ex­posed to the orb re­por­ted mostly happy memor­ies. Some said they could ac­tu­ally con­trol which memor­ies they had, bring­ing back the ones they wanted to re­live again and again. Some found it so bliss­ful they didn’t want to leave the orb, be­com­ing more and more re­clus­ive. One man grew so ad­dicted he wouldn’t leave the lab. They had to stop the ex­per­i­ments al­to­gether and lock it up with the Seers.”

  Brent­wood leaned down in or­der for her to hear his whis­per, “The ques­tion is, why? Why would an alien spe­cies design such a device? What pur­pose does it have?”

  Luna shrugged. “I’m a bio­lo­gist, not a philo­sopher. It may stim­u­late other things for the alien spe­cies, and that’s just the ef­fect it has on us. Or, they really liked their memor­ies.”

  She laughed, the sound res­on­at­ing a little too loud in his tent. “I’m not about to hy­po­thes­ize on one of the greatest finds of man­kind.” She poin­ted at him, her fin­ger rest­ing on his chest. “I’ll leave that to you.”

  He wrapped his fin­gers around her hand to gently nudge her away, but she brought up her other hand and caught him, grip­ping his hand firmly in both of hers. “That’s not all.”

  Brent­wood res­isted the urge to pull away. Luna had him in­trigued. Any more in­form­a­tion con­cern­ing this se­cret­ive mis­sion would help. Afraid to break her chain of thought, he let her hold on to hear out next words. “Yes?”

  “The orb is only big enough to hold someone’s mind, not their body. So the sci­ent­ists could only delve so far into their memor­ies, al­ways leav­ing a part of them­selves be­hind. This beacon that the orb points to is much lar­ger, large enough to sub­merge an en­tire body. You could po­ten­tially im­merse your­self and re­main lost in it forever.”

  “Wow, this is all so strange to me.” Brent­wood felt like he floated in the belly of a gi­ant jelly­fish as the tent swam around him. Alien ar­ti­facts, old memor­ies, tempta­tions. His dreams came back to him, dreams of Gemme and the past. Could it be con­nec­ted?

  “Me, too.” Luna stead­ied him with both her hands on his chest. “I didn’t mean to up­set you. Are you okay?”

  He blinked, feel­ing dizzy. “I’m fine. I just need some time alone to think about this.”

  “Wait.” Luna’s grip on his shoulders re­mained firm. “There’s some­thing else I want to talk about.”

  He stared her down. “What now?”

  “You know about the pair­ing ma­chine be­ing ruined, don’t you?”

  The change in sub­ject startled him. “What do you mean?”

  She smiled as if he’d just made her day. “You don’t know, do you? You haven’t read the re­ports on decks eighty-seven on up?”

  He grew de­fens­ive. Even though he was a lieu­ten­ant, it didn’
t mean he was all know­ing. “I read the sur­vivor re­ports. My mis­sion was to save the people on those decks, not the pro­grams. Be­sides, I’ve been swamped pre­par­ing for Al­pha Blue. Hull dam­age didn’t fall un­der my jur­is­dic­tion.”

  “Well, it’s gone. The pair­ing ma­chine and every pro­gram that went with it. Ms. Match­maker is out of a job. That’s why she’s with us, you know. The Seers had to put her some­where.”

  Gemme. She was talk­ing about Gemme. And the fact the pair­ing sys­tem was gone. Brent­wood’s head reeled with this new in­form­a­tion. Could they choose their part­ners for them­selves? Could he choose Gemme?

  “I see what you’re think­ing, Lieu­ten­ant, and I’m think­ing the same thing.” Luna leaned in so close he could feel her body heat against him. Did she know of his feel­ings for Gemme? Had she talked to her?

  His voice came out wispy with hope. “What am I think­ing?”

  In­stead of an­swer­ing, Luna pushed her face into his. Her lips crushed his in a firm and ag­gress­ive kiss, thrust­ing her tongue into his mouth. Brent­wood froze in shock, jol­ted by the feel­ing of how com­pletely wrong this whole meet­ing was. Light filtered in, il­lu­min­at­ing them pressed to­gether as the tent flap par­ted and Gemme peeked through.

  “Lieu­ten­ant, I need to talk—”

  How could he let this get so out of con­trol? Angry and em­bar­rassed, he pushed Luna back, rip­ping her lips from his as their com­bined spittle flew across the tent. But it was too late. Gemme had already seen their in­de­cent kiss and her del­ic­ate fea­tures crumpled into a mask of dis­gust. She dis­ap­peared, tent flap flip­ping down.

  “Ms. Reiner, wait!” Brent­wood pushed past Luna, scram­bling through the open­ing. He emerged just as she slid un­der the tarp into the bliz­zard. “No!”

  Brent­wood fol­lowed her, slip­ping across the floor of ice. He yanked the peg out and threw him­self into the ra­ging winds.

  “Gemme!” He shouted as the snow stung his face. “Gemme, come back!”

  Night had fallen, and he couldn’t see any­thing in the pitch-black. He ducked un­der the tarp, grabbed a beacon light from the back of the landrover, and flung him­self out into the fri­gid night.

  Snow smothered the light in a thou­sand white, dart­ing shafts, like swarms of moths in the biod­ome, blind­ing him to everything farther than a meter ahead. Brent­wood ran along the mouth of the cave, the wind push­ing him side­ways into a snow­drift. “Gemme!”

  How could he pos­sibly prove Luna had pounced on him? He failed her both as a per­son and as a lieu­ten­ant. How could she ever re­spect him again?

  Be­fore the comet shower he had had his world com­pletely un­der con­trol. He hadn’t real­ized what a small world it was, and how an in­fin­ite uni­verse en­gulfed his per­fect bubble. He never thought he’d have to face it un­til the Ex­ped­i­tion crashed, re­veal­ing a world vaster than his own.

  What had happened to the young­est ap­poin­ted lieu­ten­ant, the man who’d gradu­ated first in his class to so con­fid­ently lead the con­greg­a­tion at every meet­ing? Al­though his ho­ri­zons had broadened, he was still the same man. No smal­ler, no weaker.

  Brent­wood forced him­self up. He had an en­tire pop­u­la­tion to save, start­ing with Gemme.

  Gemme col­lapsed into the snow, won­der­ing why in the all the uni­verse she’d just run head­first into a bliz­zard. The winds tore at her thermal coat as the cold settled into the mar­row of her bones, but she didn’t care. The memory of Brent­wood pas­sion­ately kiss­ing Luna was enough to keep her out in the dark all night. Her head felt like someone had shaken it with a mo­lecule vi­brator, and she had to get away to sort out her mis­placed feel­ings.

  To think: she’d gone in to dis­cuss her own feel­ings for him. Thank good­ness she’d wit­nessed their kiss be­fore em­bar­rass­ing her­self by spew­ing out the in­de­cent feel­ings in her heart.

  Thank good­ness she’d stopped her pair­ing with Brent­wood. How could she ever marry a man at­trac­ted to someone else? Her ini­tial in­stinct to touch the de­lete panel had been cor­rect. All the other feel­ings that had come after it were ob­scenely wrong, and she struggled to come to terms with that fact. Now she knew why the matched par­ings worked so ef­fect­ively. Or­ganic ro­mance was too messy, hurt­ing the people in­volved.

  “Gemme!”

  Did she hear her name, or did the howl­ing wind play tricks in her throb­bing ears? She tightened her arms around her shoulders, try­ing to hold in her dwind­ling body heat. She knew she had to go back, but she couldn’t face Brent­wood and Luna. Not yet. She’d rather lose fin­gers and toes to frost­bite then see them to­gether.

  “Gemme!”

  There was no mis­tak­ing his voice this time. Brent­wood had come out to look for her. A sud­den rush of hope sparked in her heart and she squashed it. As a lieu­ten­ant, he couldn’t have a mem­ber of his team die of hy­po­ther­mia, whether he had feel­ings for her or not. He needed her to com­plete the mis­sion. And so did the rest of the Ex­ped­i­tion, in­clud­ing her par­ent and Fer­ris. Gemme knew her ac­tions were reck­less and selfish, yet she couldn’t bring her legs to work. Had they frozen in the snow?

  Dizzi­ness washed over her and a heavy wear­i­ness seeped in. She real­ized her hands and feet had stopped throb­bing. Numb­ness trickled through her, spread­ing to her face. Her eye­lids felt like heavy thermal blankets.

  I’ll just lie down for a minute be­fore I go back to camp.

  A faint golden light caught her at­ten­tion. Brent­wood. Her stom­ach panged like a laser shot through it. Be­sides her gut, her sore heart was the only part of her body that hadn’t gone numb. But if she slept…

  No. She forced her­self up. Her mind would only take her back to the field and the en­gage­ment party. She shook her head to keep her­self awake. No more dreams of Brent­wood. Gemme felt caught between two worlds, the harsh real­ity be­fore her, and the bliss­ful fab­ric­a­tion of her dreams. If she fell asleep, she’d be liv­ing a lie. She de­cided she’d rather have harsh truth in­stead.

  For­cing her legs up, Gemme walked to­ward the light. Every part of her body shook as she struggled to wade through snow up to her thighs. “Over here.”

  The golden light grew stronger and Brent­wood cres­ted the hill with re­lief splashed in his face. Slid­ing down, he caught her in his arms. “Gemme, I’m sorry. Thank the Guide I found you. Are you okay?”

  Be­sides a bleed­ing heart, a sickened stom­ach, and the be­gin­nings of hy­po­ther­mia? Gemme nod­ded. “Fine.”

  “Come on, let me take you back to camp. I have a lot of ex­plain­ing to do.”

  Gemme fol­lowed him, stum­bling over her own feet. She hated the fact that she had to grab his arm to stay up­right. She’d never put her­self in such a help­less, vul­ner­able po­s­i­tion again, both phys­ic­ally and emo­tion­ally.

  They walked in si­lence to the cave. It didn’t make sense to fight the howl­ing wind, and Gemme had noth­ing she wanted to say. All she could think to do was fin­ish the damned mis­sion and get on with her life. Brent­wood pulled back the tarp and she pushed her way through. The warm air of the cave sur­roun­ded her in a bath. Luna sat on a sup­ply con­tainer by the lighted en­ergy cell.

  “Well, that was stu­pid, run­ning out in a bliz­zard. I’d already told you he was mine.”

  “Luna, that’s enough.” Brent­wood came in be­hind her. He turned to Gemme and poin­ted to the sup­ply con­tainer next to Luna. “Please, sit down.”

  Did she have to? Luna was the last per­son she wanted to sit next to right now. Won­der­ing if she could dis­obey a dir­ect or­der, Gemme slumped down be­side Luna. She felt like they were both kids in a time out, and she hadn’t even done any­thing wrong. Be­sides run into a bliz­zard.

  She watched as Brent­wood walked over to the landrover and opened the hatch. “Tech, g
et up. We have a lot to talk about.”

  Tech poked his head out, curly black hair stand­ing up on end. “Did I miss some­thing?”

  Brent­wood’s voice growled. “I’ve called an im­promptu meet­ing. At­tend­ance man­dat­ory.”

  Tech’s eyes widened, “Sure thing, chief.” He stumbled out in his thermal fleece pa­jama pants. Gemme shif­ted away from Luna mak­ing room for him. Yawn­ing, he plopped down in between them.

  Brent­wood stood in front of the trio. His hands shook, but Gemme had no sym­pathy.

  “I’m go­ing to go against the dir­ect or­ders of the Seers. I may lose my po­s­i­tion when we get back be­cause of it, but there’s no other way to do this and I hate keep­ing in­form­a­tion from my team.”

  Tech scooted for­ward on the con­tainer, rub­bing his fore­head. “What’s this about?”

  Brent­wood opened his mouth, but Luna stood, hold­ing up a fin­ger. “They’re not sup­posed to know.”

  Gemme in­ter­vened. “Know about what?”

  Brent­wood gave Luna a stern look. “We should have never kept it from them in the first place.”

  “You’re go­ing against the Seers’ or­ders.” Luna’s face turned red.

  “Let them fire me for all I care.” Brent­wood turned back to ad­dress Gemme and Tech. “The Seers as­signed Ms. Leg­acy and I to a secret al­tern­ate mis­sion. We’re sup­posed to find an alien device match­ing an orb the Ex­ped­i­tion picked up in space hun­dreds of years ago. The orb is thought to have qual­it­ies that bring out someone’s memor­ies, al­low­ing them to re­live the hap­pi­est ones again and again, ad­dict­ing people to its en­ergy. Be­cause of the danger of this news be­com­ing a wide­spread panic, the Seers wanted this mis­sion kept top secret. Ms. Leg­acy and I were the only ones with clear­ance.”